The present invention relates to an improved truck for shredding and mixing products for zootechnical use including automatically actuated countercutters.
Combined mixing and shredding trucks with a vertical scroll, substantially constituted by a frustum-shaped container that tapers downwardly and is arranged on a wheeled chassis, are currently widespread in the zootechnical field to prepare fodder for animals, particularly cattle.
A rotating scroll is arranged vertically inside said container, and the profile of its helix lies on a substantially conical ideal surface.
Cutters adapted to shred the product being mixed are fixed to the scroll in positions that are peripheral thereto; the product is loaded from the top and a large amount thereof is normally constituted by fibrous material such as hay and straw, with the addition of protein integrators, silage, floury products, etcetera.
Practical experience has shown that full exploitation of the potential of the above described truck requires, among other things, an adequate use of the countercutters, which indeed are essential components in the processing of the various elements introduced.
In fact, an inappropriate insertion of the countercutters sometimes causes the material not to be mixed and produces, at the discharge, a product that is not uniform and the nutritional characteristics whereof are therefore not optimum for the cattle.
In practice, a sort of doughnut forms around the walls of the container, having a central hole being formed by the scroll, and said doughnut does not mix with the other components.
The insertion and extraction of the cutters, as well as the operating times of these actuations, are therefore closely linked to the materials or to the mixtures thereof that are present inside the container at a given time.
From the foregoing it is evident that optimum use of said truck is rather sophisticated and therefore requires a skilled operator.
Experience has in fact pointed out that the average agricultural worker does not become acquainted with the correct use and operation of the countercutters, or in any case does not dedicate particular attention to them, and it often happens that he forgets the cutters in inserted position when they must not be inserted or vice versa, thus unavoidably causing the mentioned drawbacks.